


Frozen

by carmenta



Category: Coldfire - Friedman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-01
Updated: 2006-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmenta/pseuds/carmenta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenseny and the Hunter reach an understanding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frozen

Tired. So tired, and she lay down on the bare ground when Damien and Hesseth finally stopped to rest. It took all she had to keep up with them and not let them see how far she had to push herself. She was afraid of being a burden, despite their assurances that she would not be left behind.

There were roots and little rocks digging into her side, but she barely felt them. Hesseth came and wrapped her into a blanket at some point, but she was barely aware of that. All she wanted was to sleep and rest her aching body. The music grew quieter around her as though in answer to her need for sleep. It had become shrill and jarring ever since they had entered the Wasting, and she was glad to have peace, even if it would only last for a little while. No sharp sounds and mismatched harmonies.

Jenseny slept.

And dreamed.

Of suffocating, of pain, of knives piercing the skin of her back and digging deep into her flesh. Cold and alien hands inside her, squeezing her heart in an iron grip. She struggled, panicked, but could not move. The grip tightened and she tried to scream, but no sound came. Her eyes would not open.

Again and again she tried to break free from whatever was ensnaring her. Tried to beg, to should for help, for Hesseth, for Damien, even for Tarrant. For her father, her mother, anyone who might hear.

Silence. Even the music had fallen still. Had she been able to open her eyes, she would have feared to do so, dreading to find this new silent world drained of all colour.

She fought. Threw herself against what held her, but she could not free herself. After a while, her mind trembling, she stilled. Looked inwards, as Hesseth had taught her, and sought out the wrongness.

She could see it then: white strands wove around what she dimly understood were her own organs. Like vine, almost, only these grew inside her and clenched more and more tightly. She found her heart laboriously beating under the pressure. A closer look, and she saw that the ghastly white web was growing inside herself, spreading out like a skeleton's ivory fingers.

Again she tried to scream, tried to move, tried to wake; struggled against what held her, squeezed the life out of her, suffocated, hurt –

And suddenly, blessed numbness while the vines wailed in pain.

She still could not move, but that was less important than the absence of pain.

There was no way for her to tell how long she remained in that state. She could not move, nor speak. But the vines had released their grip on her. They were hurt, and Jenseny listened to their disjointed song while she felt her strength slowly returning to her.

At some point she thought someone was making her unresponding body drink something. Then she had the strange sensation of being carried and at the same time not feeling any movements whatsoever. Se clung to the belief that this had to be Hesseth, and Damien, and that they would not leave her behind like this. They had not left her in X, and they needed her here, in the Wasting and beyond. She knew what was waiting for them, even when she could barely put it into words they could understand. It made sense to Tarrant, she sometimes thought. He was more like her than the others, and he knew what it was she spoke of.

The thought made her shiver.

More time passed, and she began to fear again. Had they not found a way to free her? Or had they decided to keep her like this, silent and unresponding so she would no longer be trouble? She struggled in earnest again, straining to break free from whatever it was that held her back like this.

At first she did not even notice the vines, but a sudden squeezing grip on her heart made her efforts falter. She looked inside again, afraid of what she would find.

The vines were growing again. Not as quickly as before, and they looked stunted to her, as though they were still hurt. And yet they entangled her body once more, slowly and steadily.

Jenseny screamed, struggled, tried to fend them off. She could hear their hunger, a thousand times louder than before. It drowned out everything else.

Then, sudden coldness.

So intense that her heart stopped beating under the shock. A gentle prod from an unseen hand and it recovered again, springing back into a feverish rhythm as she felt the icy touch move through her.

So cold. She had held her hand into a small stream once, on the way here, and the icy water had pricked her skin until the sensations faded to numbness. This time there was no numbness at all; the icy touch sliced through her like a knife.

Again she screamed. She begged for it to stop, but there was no mercy. Tears of agony filled her eyes, and she felt her cheeks turn wet. The soothing caresses in the wake of the iciness barely made a difference to the pain; they just lessened it enough for her to be fully aware of it.

The vines were screaming again; the sound was hurting her ears, hurting her mind, together with the icy knife. A jerk, making her feel as though her heart had been ripped out of her chest, and Jenseny knew nothing but blackness anymore.

***

When she became aware again, she almost wept with relief when she found that she could move her fingers. Not much, and she felt tired beyond mere exhaustion. But she could move, and the pain was gone.

Gathering her strength, she opened her eyes. Night sky above her, bright with stars and the light of two moons. They would set soon, she could see that in the colours that danced so cheerfully around her, as though they too knew that she was feeling better.

She tried to move her arms and found herself restrained by the blanket wrapped around her. It smelled of Hesseth, of warm fur and gentleness. Jenseny snuggled deeper into this reassurance.

They had saved her. They had not forsaken her, they still wanted her. They had not left her behind. She felt relief wash through her at this realization.

For a long time she lay still, slowly moving her fingers, her toes. Whispered to herself, to hear her own voice. Her throat felt raw, as though her screams had been real. The night air was colder than it had been before, and a dull ache spread in her body, not strong enough to truly pain her, but noticeable.

Jenseny did not know what had happened, but she understood that what she had seen while trapped inside herself had been real. Perhaps not in this form, but something had taken her, had tried to harm her. And something else had freed her of it.

Hesseth? Or Damien? She knew he Healed, so maybe it had been him.

She tried to sit up, needing to see them. Needing to be certain that they were still with her, and that what had happened to her had not spread to them, that they did not lie here as helpless as she had been.

It took almost all her strength, but she managed to push herself up onto her elbows and raise her head enough to look around. A camp, as they made every night, with a little fire in the middle, the bedrolls spread around it. She saw Damien first; deeply asleep, the colours and the music muted when she looked at him. There was a wrongness about him, but she could see that it was not deeply rooted.

Hesseth lay curled up on the other side of the fire, her ears laid back in a way Jenseny recognized by now as tiredness. She seemed to be well, and Jenseny breathed a soft sigh of relief. She did not know what she would have done if either of them had been harmed.

Quietly she tried to rise to get one of the canteens. She was thirsty, her throat ached, and the mere thought of water made her yearn for it.

She could have called out, but both Hesseth and Damien looked so tired. Perhaps that was her fault; if she had needed healing, then it would have taken a lot of them. And they had carried her at least for some distance; she could see that this was not the place where they had last rested, and where she had fallen under the influence of the vines.

It was a struggle to get as far as to her knees; rising completely would be impossible. She decided on crawling, and was just making her way out of her blanket cocoon when a hand on her shoulder stopped her.

Jenseny froze when she felt the chill.

"Stay," the Hunter commanded her.

She nodded, not daring to say anything. She merely watched him warily as he quickly stepped over to the packs and took out one of the canteens. When he handed it to her, she managed a murmured, "Why?"

"They rest," he told her. "They will be of no use tomorrow unless they sleep."

Jenseny looked at him, then at them.

"What happened?" she whispered. She knew that he could not be trusted, because Damien did not trust him fully. But she also knew, though she could not say why, that he did not lie.

Tarrant studied her. "Drink," he said impatiently. "Your body needs fluids. Having Vryce fall over from dehydration was inconvenient enough."

"Damien?" She looked at his sleeping form again. "He is hurt?"

Not the vines, she prayed. Please. Not them.

"He will recover if he sleeps tonight." A clear warning, and the trace of concern she thought she heard, together with a bright flash in the currents, made her wonder. Jenseny quickly nodded, then opened the canteen and took a sip of water, and another.

She was more thirsty than she had thought, and she frowned when Tarrant took the canteen from her. Still she did not dare to say anything.

"There is little water left," he said, shooting her an irritated glance as he stoppered the flask and put it back to the packs. "Tomorrow there will be more. Once you reach the river."

The river. Where he had wanted to go, and which Damien had wanted to avoid. She still was not sure why they had disagreed so strongly about it. But then again, she knew little about these matters.

"Where is it?" she ventured a question.

Tarrant gave her a level look.

"The river," she clarified.

He did not answer immediately; rather, he seemed to consider something.

"The currents flow towards it," he eventually said. "You merely need to look at them and you will know."

She did as he said, and saw that the fae was flowing in one direction, mostly, a steady and strong flow. She had seen this before, but she had not known what it meant.

"The disturbances in the current are caused by our presence here," Tarrant said.

This made her look at him, not the fae. He had never bothered to explain anything to her before; most of the time he had done his best to ignore her, and when that had not been possible, he had glared and looked irritated. The change made her wary.

"Mes Hesseth has not taught you enough," he added. "You should know these things, as an adept of your age."

"Hesseth has done her best," Jenseny said defensively, her voice a quiet whisper. She did not want to wake them.

"She is rakh, you are human. There are differences." The Hunter hesitated, then shook his head. Jenseny saw the dark fae gather around him before fading once more. "It is too late now," he said, a touch of frustration in his voice. "Vryce will have to be enough."

"Enough for what?" she felt brave enough to asked.

Tarrant gestured dismissively. "Nothing you need to concern yourself about," he said. "Do as he tells you."

Jenseny would have done so anyway, and she found it strange that Tarrant would think it necessary to remind her of it. If she had learned one thing about him, then it was that he rarely did something without reason.

"I will," she whispered. "If it helps."

"It does." The Hunter turned away from her to look at the camp, at the two sleeping figures. She saw his gaze linger on Damien, and again the shifts in the colours made her wonder.

"Not if we go to the river," she said, not sure what put the words into her mouth. It happened sometimes, and one day she would learn how to rein in herself. Sometimes the words were just too strong. "Nothing will help."

The look Tarrant gave her was icy, but the colours around him suddenly flared in a wild crescendo.

"Danger," she whispered, shivering. "We should not go to the river."

Her eyes began to hurt, and she closed them so she did not have to look at his anger.

"Do not speak of matters you don't understand, little girl," the Hunter hissed.

Silence fell, and she waited for Tarrant to retreat again so she could continue her rest. It made her uneasy that he was the only one awake, though it was hardly the first time he had taken a watch. She had slept before. And yet, the thought of surrendering to the darkness again made her afraid. What if the vines came back? She had lain down like this before, and she had not even felt them until it had been too late.

Jenseny found herself wide awake at a sudden, and she shivered at the memories. The grip on her heart, the utter helplessness…

"It will not reach you here," Tarrant said into the silence, the quiet voice strangely loud. She saw the pale eyes look at her, making her flinch. Still icy, but the anger had mingled with something else. Contemplation. Curiosity. "Your body will stop aching by morning," he continued. "If you sleep now."

Had he done this to her? But why? He would have no reason; it had only made everything more difficult.

"I have helped to Heal you, so I know what happened."

"You?" she asked before she could think better of it.

"My assistance was requested," he answered levelly, shooting her a humourless smile. "The Reverend can be a difficult man to deny."

She sensed more behind this answer, but she did not think that he would say anything else even if she had known how to ask for it.

"You will sleep now," he repeated, and there was something about his words that made her want to comply.

She remembered another night, another time when he had dragged her under like this, and she instinctively struggled to break his hold. But his grip on her merely tightened, and she did not have the skill to fend him off. And this time Damien was not here to defend her.

"I mean you no harm, child," she heard him say impatiently. "You need to rest. So you will, for tomorrow will not be easy on you. You will reach the river then."

And Damien had been afraid of the river, she thought before she fell into the darkness.


End file.
